Oracle Open World 2009 Summary

We had a great time talking to our users at Open World 2009 both at our Demogrounds booth and at our two sessions. We received a lot of interesting questions during the Optimizer Roundtable discussion, but we did not get to answer all of them due to time constraints. We plan to address the questions we received (both answered and unanswered) in future blog posts... so stay tuned. If you didn't get to attend the discussion, but have a question about the Optimizer, submit it through the email link above.

For those of you who did not get a chance to stop by our Demogrounds booth, here's a recap of the new features that we talked about. Many of the topics have already been covered in earlier blog posts.

• Enhanced bind peeking with Adaptive Cursor Sharing: Read about Adaptive Cursor Sharing and a followup.


• Faster and more accurate Statistics gathering: Read about our new statistics gathering algorithm in 11g and incremental maintenance of global statistics for partitioned tables.


• New types of Statistics that improve cardinality estimates


• Ability to gather but not publish Statistics


• Guaranteed plan stability and controlled plan evolution: Read about SQL Plan Management.


• New tools to help correct regressed execution plans: Read about our Plan Diff tool and Test Case Builder.

These topics are focused on well-known pain points from earlier versions of Oracle. But we also have plenty of new optimizations in Oracle 11gR1 and 11gR2. Stay tuned for details about some of our new optimizations.

Maria Colgan

Open World Recap and New White papers

The Optimizer group has two session and a demo station in the Database campground at this year's Oracle Open World. We will give a technical presentation on What to Expect from the Oracle Optimizer When Upgrading to Oracle Database 11g and host an Oracle Optimizer Roundtable.

The technical session, which is on Tuesday Oct 13 at 2:30 pm, gives step by step instructions on how to use the new 11g features to ensure your upgrade goes smoothly and without any SQL plan regressions. This session is based on our latest white papers, Upgrading from Oracle Database 10g to 11g: What to expect from the Optimizer and SQL Plan Management in Oracle Database 11g.

The roundtable, which is on Thursday Oct. 15th at 10:30 am, will give you a first hand opportunity to pose you burning Optimizer and statistics questions directly to a panel of our leading Optimizer developers. In fact if you plan to attend the roundtable and already know what questions you would like to ask, then please send them to us via email and we will be sure to include them. Other wise, you can hand in your questions at our demo station at any stage during the week, or as you enter the actual session. Just be sure to write your questions in clear block capitals!

We look forward to see you all at Open world.

Maria Colgan

Will the Optimizer Team be at Oracle Open World 2009?

With only two and a half months to go until Oracle Open World in San Francisco, October 11-15th, we have gotten several requests asking if we plan to present any session at the conference.

We have two session and a demo station in the Database campground at this year's show. We will give a technical presentation on What to Expect from the Oracle Optimizer When Upgrading to Oracle Database 11g and the Oracle Optimizer Roundtable.

The technical session, which is on Tuesday Oct 13 at 2:30 pm, gives step by step instructions and detailed examples of how to use the new 11g features to ensure your upgrade goes smoothly and without any SQL plan regressions.

The roundtable, which is on Thursday Oct. 15th at 10:30 am, will give you a first hand opportunity to pose you burning Optimizer and statistics questions directly to a panel of our leading Optimizer developers. In fact if you plan to attend the roundtable and already know what questions you would like to ask, then please send them to us via email and we will be sure to include them. Other wise, you can hand in your questions at our demo station at any stage during the week, or as you enter the actual session. Just be sure to write your questions in clear block capitals!

We look forward to seeing you all at Oracle Open World.

Maria Colgan

Oracle Open World follow up

We were delighted to see so many people turn up for our Open World session - Inside the 11g Optimizer - so early on Tuesday morning! A lot of people have been asking where they can find more information on the topics covered especially the demos that were shown. You can find similar worked examples for most of the new 11g Optimizer features on the Oracle By Example website. You can also get more information on SQL Plan Management in the following white paper. Our blog entry from December 2007 has more information on Adaptive Cursor Sharing while the January 2008 entry gives more details on the enhancements made to statistics. We hope you enjoyed Oracle Open World as much as we did!

Will the Optimizer development team be at Oracle Open World?

The largest gathering of Oracle customers, partners, developers, and technology enthusiasts will happen in September when Oracle will host its annual user conference Open World in San Francisco and the Optimizer development group will be there! You will have two opportunities to meet the team -- attend the technical presentation "Inside the 11g Optimizer - Removing the mystery" on Tuesday morning at 9am or stop by the Oracle demo grounds (in Moscone West) to see all of the demos for the 11g new features and ask the development team any burning questions you may have!

Maria Colgan